The creature towered nearlyto the roof of the passage, taller than Craghammer and almost twice as broad. The fire elemental reminded Braiden of the windwalker from Yhip Valley, shaped very much like a musclebound man, monstrously broad and thick in the arms and legs.
Braiden held his breath as a second elemental lumbered down the tunnel. Flames like hair rose from the top of its vaguely spherical head, licking at the top of the tunnel. Braiden gulped.
But not before he noticed the gleaming metallic bangles each of them wore on their arm-like appendages. The mercenary merchant in Braiden gave a small, delighted, “Ooh” at the sight of potentially lootable jewelry. Were they brass? Perhaps even gold?
“Worthless pyrite,” Augustin explained, as if he’d already read the inside of Braiden’s greedy mind. “Fire elementals are strangely vain creatures, more likely than the other kinds to carry precious metals and gemstones, except perhaps for earth elementals. Still, we’ve seen how bereft of valuable minerals the dungeon has been, at least this close to the surface.”
Disappointment twinged at the inside of Braiden’s chest. He opened his mouth to answer, but Elyssandra spoke first.
“Another fine lesson, Augustin,” she said, actually meaning it. “But it would help us more to learn how to fight these creatures.”
Before Augustin could answer, the air in the passage suddenly thinned. It was subtle, at first, but noticeable in the way that Braiden could feel his hair gently bend toward the elementals, as if they were inhaling strongly enough to — oh, no.
“On your guard,” Braiden shouted. “They’re about to attack.”
As one, the elementals thrust their arms forward, launching twin fireballs down the corridor at terrifying speeds. Braiden cringed, expecting the roar of dragonfire, surprised by the far more subtle hisses and crackles that accompanied their attacks. Huh.
Elyssandra ducked, spear at the ready, and Augustin muttered and gestured, still preparing his spell. Braiden bit his bottom lip, hands shaking as he attempted to weave a shield — but would anything he conjured even stand up to the flames?
Warren answered for them all, stepping forward as he brandished his quarterstaff, spinning it expertly in both hands. The lacquered wood blurred, blending into a whirring circle like the blades of a pinwheel.
The fireballs splashed into Warren’s quarterstaff, then dissipated, snuffed out by its rapid spinning. But wood clattered to the ground as Warren shook his paws, hopping from one foot to the other. Braiden’s nostrils filled with the smell of burning fur.
“Oh, gods,” he said, reaching for Warren. “Are you — ”
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Warren said. “They only singed me. It’s nothing.”
And then a strange susurrus issued from the twin elementals, like the rasp of coals stirring in a brazier, logs being jostled around in a fireplace. Were they laughing?
Braiden scowled. Too many times he’d run over Augustin’s lectures about the elements in his head. Mother Nature, he explained, was neither kind nor malevolent. But as their brushes with elementals of all flavors had shown, Mother Nature sure had a twisted sense of humor.
The elementals rushed and chuckled once more as the air sucked down the passage again. They were mustering another salvo of fireballs.
Hah. Not this time. Braiden thought of how he’d smothered the dust devils, then remembered how he and Augustin had this exact conversation about how a weaver might deal with creatures made of flame.
No different than putting out a grease fire on a stovetop, surely. Throw a big enough towel on a flaming pan and you could starve the fire out.
Heedless of the elementals’ overconfident laughter, Braiden conjured the thickest threads he could muster, warp against weft, a blanket fit to smother even the biggest blazing bacon accident.
He twisted at the hip as the great sheet of fabric materialized, gripping it by the hem, then tossing it at the end of his revolution, aiming for the elemental on the right. It emitted a high-pitched screech, like a kettle on the boil. The blanket dropped flat to the ground, consuming the fire elemental as it fell.
The elemental on the left shrieked in apparent fear, but it was too late. A howling wind was already rushing at Braiden’s back, bending expertly around him to speed straight at the fire elemental. This, too, he’d learned from Augustin, stories about wind magic’s intricacies in the wild.
Blow at a brushfire the wrong way and you would only risk spreading it further, feeding the flames. But blow hard andstrong enough at a smaller fire with overwhelming winds? The elemental never stood a chance.
The twin elementals died out. The bangles on the one that Augustin destroyed fell to the ground with a metallic clink, then immediately turned to ashes. Braiden tried not to look so disappointed. He didn’t bother checking under the blanket, leaving it on the ground to expire at the end of his spell’s natural duration.
Each member of the party turned to check on each other, their standard silent post-battle assessment to make sure that everyone was okay. And everyonewasokay, but none more so than Elder Bahul, who was once again lying on his enormous treasure chest, his bandanna pulled over his eyes.
Braiden threw his hands up. “Were you planning to lend us a hand in the fight, maybe, or — ”
Elder Bahul shrugged. “Seemed like you had everything under control.”
Apparently this elder could be just as much of a thorn in the side as the other one.
They carried onward in relative peace and quiet, Braiden’s preferred way of carrying onward. But it was also nice to know that the fire elementals were more of a pushover than he’d initially feared. The demon Valefour was still a big, red question mark, but they’d cross that bridge when they got there.
Braiden blinked hard in the semi-darkness of the passage, the rock walls glowing orange and blue in turns between the lanterns they carried and the soft pulse of Elyssandra’s floating blueberry pin. A different and familiar color of light was streaming toward them from the far end of the tunnel, accompanied by a familiar and welcome warmth.
